


Hold it close

by P_lutonium



Category: Supergirl (TV 2015)
Genre: F/F, Sharing Clothes, Supercat Week
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-30
Updated: 2015-12-30
Packaged: 2018-05-10 10:15:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,131
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5581864
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/P_lutonium/pseuds/P_lutonium
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>You never expect yourself to care, not until the unthinkable happens and suddenly you're thrust into the deep end.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Hold it close

**Author's Note:**

> A little late, I know, but I decided to hop on the bandwagon of Supercat week, this is my first published SuperCat piece, please don't murder me :O

Cat was told on a Monday.

The moment when a more than slightly frantic Alex Danvers stumbled into her office was permanently etched into her brain. When she closed her eyes she could see the brunette explaining something to the computer boy, and then the boy in question collapsing onto his desk in a mix of defeat and utter panic. Later, she would dismiss both him and James for the remained of the day.

The second moment that she would see whenever she closed her eyes would be an even more defeated Alex Danvers knocking silently on her door and stumbling into the room. Their conversation played over and over in her head, like a broken voicemail. Cat could remember crumbling a little inside, like a little part of her had broken off.

_“At 9 o’clock last night, Supergirl was declared MIA and is presumed dead.”_

Somehow that one sentence seemed to cripple her, but she managed to remain somewhat calm as she thanked Alex for telling her, and advised the woman to go home and rest, which was rewarded with a very solid, “I can’t rest whilst my sister is missing.” The brunette had left the office immediately, and Cat suspected that she had barely made it to the elevator before breaking down.

Cat managed to keep a straight face as she stood from her desk, and walked to the ensuite bathroom, and fell apart. Supergirl, Kara Danvers, was missing, presumed dead. They weren’t particularly close, although Cat would argue that Kara was the only person other than Carter that she felt safe around, whether that was because of her alter ego or not, and Cat would argue not, because she’d always felt that way around her assistant, even before she knew of her real identity.

Whether she was in the bathroom a minute or an hour, Cat eventually stood on shaky knees, gripping the white porcelain sink and staring at herself in the mirror. Usually, she would reprimand herself for getting so worked up, but she knew that she had a valid reason if she reacted like this, how would the city react with the news that their own Superhero was missing? How would they cope? They’d become so dependent on Supergirl that she wasn’t sure that they could.

She emerged from the bathroom fresher faced with almost no clue that she had been crying, she shared a careful look of understanding with the IT boy and threw herself into work. Without her assistant, she took it upon herself to sort out her own meetings, and that meant clearing all of them for today. She wouldn’t hire a new assistant yet because she refused to believe that Kara was dead. Part of her hoped that if the Kryptonian did die, then she would somehow know, a gut feeling of some sort.

Kara Danvers was not dead.

She wouldn’t believe it until her body was presented in front of her.

By the afternoon, she was on her fifth coffee, which she had acquired from the coffee machine down the hall, she drank each cup quickly, and if it tasted stale then she didn’t notice. Each trip past Kara desk felt like a stab in the stomach, until eventually she couldn’t help it and she cut her journey short to make a beeline for the desk, everything was neat and tidy, just how Cat expected it to be. Her notebook was resting on the desk, and for a moment Cat debated whether to look at it, but that felt like she would be admitting to something that she wasn’t ready to admit to, so she passed over it and glanced at the draws.

The bottom draw hadn’t been closed properly, and she leaned too close it, but against better judgement she tugged it the other way, and it slid open to reveal only two items inside. A blouse, which Cat picked up, stroked, and claimed to be a cheap fabric, and told herself that the only reason she was still holding it was because her hand refused to let go of the horrible fabric, the second was a familiar blue shirt. Cat promptly shut the draw, made her way to her own office and sat down, dropping the stolen shirt onto her lap.

After a long moment she chuckled bitterly, they’d only been without Supergirl for roughly 16 hours, but already everything seemed to be falling apart, a little ironic really, that now they were so dependent on Supergirl that a day without her felt like an eternity.

Cat left work early and returned to her penthouse. She hoped that she change in scenery would help clear her head, it didn’t help in the slightest. She didn’t eat anything, her stomach churned, and she didn’t drink any of the expensive bourbon sitting in her liquor cabinet, she told herself that it was because she didn’t want to waste it, in reality, it was because she wanted to be level headed in case there was any news.

Every news channel she watched only reported on boring events, there was no new news about Supergirl, nor was there any updated from Alex of the government division that was definitely not the FBI. Carter was with his father for the week, and so she retired to bed in the early evening, and slept fitfully all night, with nightmares of vivid imaged of both Supergirl and Kara dying over and over.

By the next day, her phone was still deadly silent, and it wasn’t until she entered her personal elevator that she realised what shirt she was wearing today, who’s shirt she was wearing today. IT boy was back, and Cat knew that he noticed it straight away, but he nodded respectfully as she walked towards her office, looking away from the empty desk outside.

Today she couldn’t put off any meetings, and so begrudgingly made her way around the city to various venues, she had a couple of borderline condescending comments on her shirt, but a sharp look was enough to send the speaker scurrying. The meetings kept her occupied, not enough to stop her mind from wandering, but enough to be able to focus on something else.

The office floor was silent when she returned, and as soon as she glanced at the scenes above her desk she knew why. It was official, Supergirl was MIA. Cat tried to hold her head high as she walked towards her office, but her lip was beginning to quiver and she didn’t know if she could do it. As she sat, the floor kept staring, as if they were waiting on orders of what to do now. After a moment, Cat composed herself and made her way out.

“As you are now all aware, yes Supergirl is missing, but no, that doesn’t mean she is dead. There are people out there as we speak searching for out superhero.” Her mind supplied an image of Alex, who was no doubt still searching for her sister, and she probably hadn’t slept for a second. “Until such time as she is confirmed death or alive, we will not speculate, I know that some of you owe your lives to her, and so it’s in your best interests to believe in her, if she is alive, she will find her way back to us, because if there's anything we know of Supergirl, it’s that she’s determined, and she won’t stop until her city. and the people in it, are safe.”

She nodded her head to signal the end of her mini speech and returned to her desk. She kept her back straight and tried to look like this wasn’t affecting her as much as it was, she tried to work, but her fingers hit the wrong keys and her hand refused to hold a pen; so when 5 o’clock rolled around she was more than relieved to see people filing out of the office. She held her breath until the last person had filed out into the elevator, before she finally let the dam break, and break it did.

Cat was gasping for breath, and choking off sobs, but she couldn’t help it, her body refused to cooperate, and so almost two hours later she was still in a shrivelled heap at her desk, the only light coming from the streetlamp below. As she stood, she made a beeline for her drinks cabinet and poured herself a healthy glass of bourbon, which she threw back in one and coughed at the sudden assault of alcohol. The burning was a welcome distraction, though, and she poured herself another glass before finally calling her car.

The drive home seemed too quiet, the whole city seemed too quiet. A place without Supergirl, somewhere too ordinary, is this was ordinary was like?

She hated it.

Once the car had driven off, Cat let herself in and kicked off her heels. She padded barefoot into the kitchen to look for something vaguely edible in the kitchen. She found a box of Carters cereal, and poured herself a bowl, it was sugary and disgusting, but she didn’t care. On autopilot she dumped the bowl into the sink and made her way into the bedroom, skipping the living room and the television that would only tell her about what she already knew.

It was only early evening again, but she fell into bed and tried to forget everything.

It was a Wednesday when Supergirl's cape washed up on the riverbank.

Cat found out when she unlocked her phone and found a missed call from Alex Danvers. She called back and was told the information. That day she called in sick. The world wouldn’t end without her, and so she stayed in bed all day, she read a book, she tried to sleep. But she didn’t turn on the television. The damned thing would stay off until Supergirl was found, alive.

It was a Thursday when Cat began to lose hope.

It had been almost a month now, and Kara shirt smelt like Cat and not Kara, she still wore it almost every day, and no one dared question it anymore. No one seemed to talk about Supergirl around her anymore either, not even Carter. A week ago she had begun to question why she was so hung up on Supergirl’s disappearance, when she came to the conclusion her actions included a lot of shouting, swearing and then crying, in that order.

The last two issues of her magazine had included original two-page spreads about her beloved Superhero, and each had been in so much demand that they’d printed over 2 million copies. Cat had both of the originals and kept them framed in her foyer.

The updates from Alex were vague, and Cat didn’t expect to hear from her again, until yesterday evening when the brunette had turned up on her doorstep carrying a bottle of wine and offering to keep her company, for most of the evening Alex had shared stories about Kara, and Cat offered a few of her own.

_“It was within the second week of her working for me” Cat begun, finishing off her glass of wine, which finished off their third bottle. “Kara was still learning the ropes, I asked her to run to the printed to grab a couple of things that I’d printed off. Almost an hour later she was still gone, and so I went after her and bare in mind that the printer is only down the hall and around the corner. It turns out, that I'd put two too many 0’s on my print order, and she was trying to collect everything. I think we had a stack of paper this” she measured with her hands, “big.”_

Although Cat had begun to lose hope, their evening had brought her spirits up again, and it seemed it had spurred Alex on too because she’d left after breakfast that morning with a determination to go over everything that she had found out, even if there hadn’t been much in the first place.

Cat returned home that evening and wasn’t at all put off by having to clean up their carnage from the night before (usually she’d have a house cleaner, but she’d given her paid leave because sometimes cleaning took her mind off of things.) She dumped the bottles in the recycling and washed up their used glasses. Cat went to bed that evening and changed into Kara’s shirt, it was soft and comforting and had the phantom smell of Kara. She made her way onto the balcony and was almost pushed over by something crashing into her.

It was a Thursday when Supergirl came home, but it was a Friday when she when she was back in action.


End file.
